In a regal interview he gave the Israeli press on the eve of the state’s ” Independence Day,” Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel, said the following: “I remember how it all began. The whole state of Israel is a millimeter of the whole Middle East. A statistical error, barren and disappointing land, swamps in the north, desert in the south, two lakes, one dead and an overrated river. No natural resource apart from malaria. There was nothing here. And we now have the best agriculture in the world? This is a miracle: a land built by people” (Maariv, 14 April 2013).

In writing this, I’m bracing myself for being called an anti-Semite, an appeaser of terrorists and propagandist for the Palestinian cause. I’m none of those things. I say this simply because these days, it seems, anyone who dares criticise the policies of the Israeli government leaves themselves open to such accusations.